but somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams

And they screamed—

She was his voice; she, the lost one, who stared wildly at the dark, fire-stained forest without seeing, screaming out the pain of the one who lay silent upon the ground.

For he was still on fire—his mind still burned, trembling with memory and broken nerve endings, and, despairing, he fled deep.

He showed nothing. He was the embodiment of stillness, rapid breathing so shallow it barely stirred his sides, and somewhere, somewhere, he saw the insidious glow of orange cast upon distant tree branches, and how their shadows danced and wavered—but he would not be able to recall it later. It simply was, like the fire's reflection in his fear-stricken, open eyes, as his memory so cruelly replayed it over and over again.

The heat; the heat that had been like death's breath down his neck, the heat which had come as the beast had charged. The air had trembled with it, had blurred the blue eyes chasing after its devastating creation, and in the darkness the stark contrasts of its molten body had devoured all else.

Each moment was agony. Merely existing was agony, trapped in a time loop in which things never changed: something in the back of his mind whispered where did things go wrong? despite already knowing the answer, but it all crumbled and turned to dust, fragments of thoughts falling to the floor as the pain crippled his mind.

And still she screamed out his pain, as others burst onto the scene. He saw them, too, as he had seen the trees and their distant crowns; like ghosts they flitted across his field of vision, but the pain obliterated their existence in his mind. For all that he knew, they might've actually been ghosts, things conjured up by a restless soul still seeing sparks and sunspots. He knew nothing of what happened, of how Tembovu leaned across his charred hide to snap at the poor moths drawn to his flames—but he felt him, felt his sturdy spine beneath warm flesh and sticky skin, talons embedded deep in his unfamiliar back as Diego clung to his perch.

He could feel the rocketing of his forceful pulse, feel his terror in his heart's fleet-footed rhythm—Irma's shrieks died out in a helpless kind of confusion as she just sat there among the pine needles, feathers ruffled and blue eyes sad and lost. And Mauja, he was floating somewhere in between them all, hovering upon the edges of consciousness.

But as they traded, screams and silence, the pain she had felt for him became his own: she sat quiet but the screams started again, a mindless howl dying out into a whimper.

It hurt too much to scream.

It hurt too much to live at all.

It hurt so much that the only thing he could do was weep, softly, silently, wishing he could fall asleep—his body cried out for darkness, his mind for reprieve. The healing falling like sparks and dark fog brought the pain into bearable proportions, tearing him cruelly from the high spires of out-of-his-mind agony and into the dirt and grit where his nerves had words for just how badly it hurt.

Irma, finally, turned to look at the broken body convulsing under the ministration of the healers—muscles spasming with the trial of mending, a small pebble which had somewhere set off a rockslide, and he could not stop because one movement set off another involuntary response. Hemlock had been babbling about something, but she hadn't cared to listen, and once her tired gaze had found the whimpering, twitching shape of him, she did not bother to look at anything else. The jagged scream shearing through her mind and soul had died out, leaving profound silence in the bond: like a child, he grasped for them, but without words, without much thought, and doggedly they bore his onslaught with their love.

For what else could they do, but watch as charred flesh grew pink and tender? What else could they do, but sit there in exhausted silence and love him, offering the only comfort that they could?

Diego remained upon the giant's back as he made his way over to Irma—and Irma, when cast in his fire-shadow, peered up at him blankly. Heat burns and a few cuts littered the massive pale knees, but they were soon obscured by his head.

They knew what had happened—the memory of the charging, molten elephant was etched as permanently in their minds as it was in Mauja's. But they also knew that in the midst of his agony, in the calm of his tired (burning) mind drifting off into a darkness in which the pain was simply a deep throb, he had never been angry.

So she leaned against the black nose bridge, blinking, waiting, watching, loving.

[ @Tandavi @Alysanne @Evangeline @Naerys || Mauja is starting to sort of.. fall asleep, as the healing progresses. ]

Mauja

the white queen